The tools that modern information technology provides allow us to communicate with an ever increasing number of people. However, reaching those particular individuals in our immediate vicinity is often more difficult than it may appear at first sight.
Consider, for example, the steps necessary to send an e-mail message to the individuals working on the same floor of the same building of an individual's office. Just remembering the names of all of the persons will be a problem.
The prior art suggests certain peripherally related arrangements.
As discussed in the article entitled Intelligent Addressing Capability for E-mail systems (ip.com reference IPCOM000028248D), users of electronic mail programs such as IBM's Lotus Notes or Microsoft Hotmail are accustomed to saving contacts in an ‘address book’ for later lookup and usage. To simplify sending e-mail to a set of users these programs commonly allow the user to set up ‘distribution lists’ consisting of a name and a subset of the contacts in that person's address book. For instance, a user might set up a distribution list called DEPARTMENT that holds all the people he works with that share his manager. Distribution lists work well when the subset of names is one that the user will want to use again and again, but are cumbersome to set up if used just once, and are also prone to getting ‘out of date’ quickly. As such, users that have need to contact widely differing subsets of contacts are not greatly assisted by their address book. For example, in the DEPARTMENT distribution list, if people are constantly joining and leaving the dept., the list would need to be continually updated. The notion of ‘public’ distribution lists helps minimize the impact of such situations. There are times, however, when a user wants to send e-mail to a subset of users based on some property of their stored profile, such as locality, instead of based on predetermined sets of contacts. This would be useful, for example, in quickly advising users within some geographical radius that a weather advisory was taking effect for the area or that a power outage is scheduled for the neighbourhood, etc. Users might also want to send e-mail to all users based on some complex set of criteria, such as names starting from A to D with known phone numbers that are within 40 miles. Proposed is an automated algorithm that would be constructed as part of the address book (AB) component of an e-mail system. To enable users to send e-mail to users within a geographical radius, the address book would be able to query an address server (such as MapQuest, for example) to determine the distance of users from a targeted central address (as-the-crow-flies or best-street-driving algorithms) or via CPS attributes, for instance. In this way, a user is empowered to send an e-mail to a street address and radius. The address book could be enabled to cache this locality information to reduce the number of times it needs to query the server for information (e.g. if a user sends an e-mail to all users within a 50 mile radius and then all users within a 40 mile radius of the same address, the AB might not need to ask the server for the same distance information again).
The article entitled “911 Mass Calls” (ip.com reference IPCOM000021807D) meanwhile discloses a system that will warn members of the public that are close to a dangerous situation such as a fire in a tunnel, a major traffic jam or any tragedy. The goal is to have the public avoid dangerous situations or conditions so as to not to add to the danger and confusion. It is difficult to contact everyone at the same time, especially when a central speaker system is not available. In recent tragedies, like the tunnel fires in Austria, it would have been beneficial to contact the people who were riding in the cars and approaching the tunnel. Rapid communication is always a problem in such events, as they occur unexpectedly and there is a lack of knowledge on the part of the people involved in the tragedy as to how to contact the people who would benefit from knowing how to avoid the incident. With the current state of technology, the geographic position of cellular phones is known by the equipment and systems of the telephone provider. As a result, this warning system would be able to identify cellular phones that are located within the danger area, or are approaching the area and then use that information to send warning messages and instructions to those cellular phones. When an accident or other emergency occurs, or is about to occur, a traffic emergency service is contacted. The location of the incident is determined from the call in one of the following ways: it is provided by the caller, localization of the regular telephone or by using position information from the cellular phone provider. The danger area, as well as the estimated duration thereof, is determined based on the type of disaster. For example: spreading chemicals require increased attention in a relatively greater area. The warning system is initiated. Using the location information, a query is run on the available records of the telephone providers to search for cellular phones that are within the danger area. The query may be optionally restricted to the coordinates on which a road is situated. Users may subscribe to this warning system to be notified whenever an incident occurs in close proximity to them. A list of these identified cellular phones is built and messages are sent to the people who have subscribed to the warning system. The warning system will interrupt any ongoing conversation that is active on those phones and then provide them with a warning message. In addition to the query of cellular phones within the danger area, a query is run on cellular phones approaching the danger area and on the phones of those who would enter the danger area within a certain time period. The phones that are selected are located on the roads that have been identified from the map coordinates of the danger area. This query is based on the location of the phone at the current time of the incident in combination with the location of the phone a time period before. The system calculates the direction and velocity of the phone user, and determines if action should be taken. If action has to be taken, the phone user is contacted either through SMS or voice, then instructions are provided.
The publication entitled “Dynamic Distribution Lists” (ip.com reference IPCOM000109996D) finally describes Dynamic Distribution List, also known as a Search List, an object for director systems. The contents of a conventional distribution list are established via the manual action of adding or removing members. Conversely, the contents of a Search List are established via sophisticated exclusion and inclusion criteria against the director database.
Search lists are indispensable in environments where there is constant information flux, as they require no maintenance to always be up to date. FIG. 1 shows a search list that when opened, correctly displays the members of department 123. If an individual transfers out of that department, he or she immediately disappears from the list. Because the inclusion mechanism is a search criteria (in this case “including members whose department equals 123”), this Search List never needs updating.
A dialog box is shown that enables the end user to create Search Lists. This is a dialog box from the IBM OS/2* product, where Search Lists are currently in use. In OS/2, Search Lists are key elements in sending mail and automated phone dialing. The criteria is entered by the end user and saved for future use. Internally, and unbeknownst to the end user, the criteria is translated to a Structured Query Language (SQL) statement that is understood by the relational directory system, and stored. When the Search List is opened to display its members, or when it is used to address a piece of mail or to dial the telephone, the SQL statement is executed and immediately produces the members that match the criteria. The criteria that can be specified is limited only by the power of SQL, so therefore complex Search Lists may be created.
Returning to the original communication problem, inside a building the best solution that the existing technology provides is a public distribution list, however based on the dimension of the building, and based on the ratio of movements that the peoples are subject to the setup and maintenance of such list may result very expensive and not effective.
The same limitations will apply in a number of circumstances for example if instead of sending an e-mail it may be desirable to send an instant message such as a lotus (RTM) sametime (RTM) message.
The lack of a reliable and updated group of users based on the proximity to us will limit our possibility to communicate with the people that are working and living close to us.